planet earth looks blue

With his puffy white beard and rotund belly Captain Paul Watson fits the archetypal image for sea captain.  Co-founder of Greenpeace and the Founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Captain Watson has been a champion for the animal kingdom since he was nine years old, running around the Canadian woods destroying animal traps laid out by hunters.  As a teenager he left home to work on a steamship and then joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he sailed around the world, learning the ins and outs of the ocean, and establishing a connection with the creatures of our vast otherworld.  By 25, the Captain was risking his life for a pod of sperm whales, facing off a Russian harpoon vessel in his inflatable raft.  There he looked face to face with a dying whale, and vowed to give his life to protecting the beautiful, mysterious leviathans.  He has done just that.  While I am writing this, the Captain is commanding his ship, the Steve Irwin through huge glaciers and ice storms, hunting the hunters.  He and his crew have been chasing a Japanese whaling ship, doing whatever they can to stop them from killing a whale.  So far they have been successful.  

There has been an international ban on commercial whaling since 1986, but several countries continue to hunt whales, Japan, Norway, and Iceland being the biggest culprits.  They whale under a scientific research clause in the moratorium.  Apparently they need to kill the whales for research?  But whaling, just like everything else, has to do with money.  Whale meat is sold in Japan for a high price, and the rest of the creature is discarded.  Sure, they’re are a few tribes remaining in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere that actually hunt a handful of whales to use both the meat and the blubber, but they are not the ones responsible for wiping out the whale populations to a fraction of what they were before steam-powered ships sailed into the game.  Today almost 1,500 whales are hunted each year, and thousands more are killed in fishing nets.  Ironically, it is in defense of the fish that some people support whaling.  The argument is that the whales consume such a huge portion of the fish populations, that their populations should be thinned down.  So I wonder why the eco-balance was fine when there were hundreds of thousands of whales instead of just the thousands that there are today.

I thank Captain Watson for defending the defenseless.  He has put his life in danger time and time again, desperately trying to conserve the most magnificent creatures on earth.  And while I’m safe and warm, mug of hot cocoa in hand, I’ll raise my cup out to him, sailing through the Antarctic, throwing stink bombs on Japanese whaling ships, promoting peace on earth and goodwill to all.  

2008-12-22